Hartford Delegation Beats A Path To City That Sells Its Rich Past

LOWELL, Mass. — For the past decade-and-ahalf, this red-brick industrial town on the Merrimack River has been making its future by rebuilding its past.

Friday, a pair of Connecticut state officials, a trio of historical experts and a magazine publisher traveled to Lowell from Hartford to study how Connecticut's capital city might perform a similar trick.

For almost a year, William Hosley of the Wadsworth Atheneum and John Boyer of the Mark Twain Memorial have been heading up a small group of historical experts and other interested people who think Hartford can draw on its past to power economic development and education -- if the city can find a way to tie its historical landmarks into a coherent whole.

Their idea is to develop a historical trail through Hartford, perhaps along the lines of the Freedom Trail in Boston, which would lead visitors and students into Hartford history.

If separate landmarks such as the Twain memorial, the Atheneum, Bushnell Park and the Colt armory could be tied together, the whole could become greater than the sum of the parts.

School groups would flock to Hartford and grasp, more fully than if they were visiting only the Mark Twain house, Victorian-era Hartford's significance in the literary world. Convention visitors might stay an extra day to follow a heritage trail through the city.

The Hartford Heritage Trail is the working title for the idea, and Hosley, Boyer, Michael Kerski of the Greater Hartford Architecture Conservancy and a few others are working with the National Park Service and the National Trust for Historic Preservation to see how such a trail could be built in Hartford.

"Every time I come back to Hartford, I'm impressed with what we have in our own back yard," said Mary Parker, co-owner of the Hartford Publishing Group and a member of the Heritage Trail steering committee that came to Lowell.

Eugene Leach, a professor of history and American studies at Trinity College, said he never was greatly interested in local

history. But then he began understanding, through the research and work of his students, the richness of Hartford's history, especially during the second half of the 19th century when people such as Twain and Samuel Colt made Hartford an important cultural and industrial center.

"Gradually, it grew on me that this is something that should be made available to the public," Leach said Friday as he toured the Boott Cotton Mills Museum, a Victorian-era factory complex that is part of the Lowell National Historical Park. The national park complex had 733,000 visitors from all 50 states and 20 foreign countries in 1991, and park officials hope to attract 1.5 million people a year.

The park and a partnership of government officials and business and community leaders have been a major force in resurrecting a city that had the nation's highest unemployment rate for a city its size, National Park Service and Lowell officials told the Hartford visitors at a luncheon.. The partnership aims to woo new businesses and investment by promoting Lowell's cultural attributes.

Like all of eastern Massachusetts, Lowell has been rocked by the recession. Nevertheless, the downtown in this city of 103,000 people -- with its restored Victorian storefronts, gray stone crosswalks and canals built to carry water to 19th century textile mills -- was a lively, crowded place Friday afternoon.

Because of mechanisms such as the Lowell Office of Cultural Affairs that promote the city's historical sites and other cultural attributes, "we'll be one of the first cities, hopefully, to rebound [from the recession] and move ahead," said Jim Cook, director of the Lowell Plan, a public-private economic development agency.

Lowell was the nation's first planned industrial city, and the recently opened Boott museum is a striking artifact of a city textile industry that was weaving 700,000 yards of cloth a week in 1885. A room crammed with 88 demoniacally clacking looms, so loud that speech is impossible, gives visitors of a vivid taste of how brutal conditions were for factory workers during the industrial revolution.

Historical sites, if well-connected and promoted by a heritage trail, could tell a vivid story in Hartford as well, Boyer said.

A heritage trail in Hartford is not meant to be a panacea, Boyer said.

But, he said, "I feel the historical sites [in Hartford] can contribute significantly more to tourism for both Greater Hartford and the state of Connecticut than they do now."

The steering committee hasn't decided what a heritage trail would look like in Hartford, which historical sites would be included and how the project would be paid for. But the group hopes to take a big step Dec. 16, when it will invite City Manager Howard Stanback, city council members and other community leaders to a meeting with a representative of the National Trust to discuss how the heritage trail idea can move toward reality